How To Use An Iron To Transform Plastic Bags Into Something Useful

This is brilliant. What are your most inventive uses for plastic bags?

If you’ve got a heap of plastic bags just waiting to be used for something, join the club. It’s hard to know what to do with all of the plastic bags we collect while shopping, but thanks to this nifty tutorial from DIY with Hometalk, you’re about to find the perfect way to upcycle them. It turns out you can use an iron to transform all of that plastic into something way more useful—finally!

This video demonstrates how you can use nothing but an iron and parchment paper to create more of a “fabric” out of the plastic bags, so that they can then be used to create much more sturdy totes, pouches and more. (P.S. The parchment paper is a necessary item, as it will keep you from having a big melted plastic mess on your hands, so keep that in mind before proceeding!)

Watch how it’s done here:

Declutter and get yourself a new tote bag, all in one simple DIY project!

Of course, once you know how to fuse plastic bags using an iron, you’ve opened a whole new world of possibilities. You can now create your own bags in which to carry your lunch to work. Blogger Katie Lewis of The Red Kitchen shows us how it’s done using a tutorial on her website. The end product is pretty impressive:

And if you’re looking for even more ways to reuse your plastic bags, Pinterest is a great place to find inspiration. With just a quick search, I found a guide over at Thrifty Fun for creating a shaggy hooked rug using plastic bags, and I also found this how-to from Reuse Grow Enjoy on weaving a basket using plastic bags:

If you don’t happen to have a whole lot of extra time for crafts, you can also try One Crazy House’s tip and use the bags to cover your car’s side mirrors before a snow storm to make the defrosting/snow scraping process a little easier. Genius, huh?